Dmitry Orlov

Europe’s leaders are busily hatching plans for remilitarization, getting ready for the Russians to attack, which happens to be something that the Russians, most insultingly, have no intention of doing. But that’s just the same; if the Russians don’t want to attack Europe, perhaps Europe can attack Russia instead? Does that seem like a spectacularly dumb idea? Well, perhaps it does, but even such a high level of stupidity is hardly enough to derail Europe’s remilitarization project. It would take more than mere stupidity: a lack of money, perhaps, or a lack of industrial capacity.

In any case, the plan of the European elites is as follows:

1. Spend lots of borrowed money on useless weapons systems, pocket part of that money and park it offshore.
2. Provoke Russia into starting a war by genociding Russian populations in any locations where they are concentrated in large numbers (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Transnistria, Cyprus; Russia itself).
3. Suffer a humiliating defeat and declare unconditional surrender.
4. Flee to a tropical paradise and enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, leaving the Russians to attempt to mitigate the ensuing humanitarian disaster.

If ever this plan doesn’t seem sufficiently brilliant to Europe’s leaders, all that means is that it’s time to up the dose of cocaine. This magic substance can make even the dullest former banker, trade union functionary or lady-gynecologist seem (to him/herself) as a brilliant military strategist.

The entire EU apparatus in Brussels is betting on war — and not for victory, but for profit. And not so much for profit in the traditional sense of making something useful and selling it profitably, but in the sense of scaring the public using phantom threats, running up public debt and pocketing some of it. The European military-industrial complex, stuffed with politicians’ friends and relatives, requires money. Unfortunately, to make that money flow requires some blood to flow as well.

The price of the question at the moment stands at around 800 billion euros — but that’s only in the near future; in the longer term, the sky is the limit. France alone is planning to allocate 431 billion euros for the needs of its army next year, which happens to be more than Russia’s entire military budget. Note the difference, however: Russia is fighting and winning a major land war while France doesn’t even have a fighting force it could field except for the rather tiny Foreign Legion. But it does have quite a few money-grubbing military bureaucrats.

You might think that I am somehow prejudiced against France, so here are some dry facts. France is not officially at war. It is not conducting any military operations anywhere (training exercises don’t count). It does not participate in armed conflicts anywhere in the world (French mercenaries don’t count). Then why does it need 431 billion euros’ worth of weapons?

The answer is both frightening and hilarious at the same time: the French are preparing to go to war against Russia. They are even mentioning some specific numbers: they imagine that they might need 50 thousand soldiers. They imagine that Britain and Germany will join their coalition of voluntary interventionists, adding up to a mighty army of at least 100-150 thousand European souls disporting themselves on the ground somewhere in the former Ukraine, daring the Russians to drive them out — which the Russians are prepared to do quite readily. Roughly half of them would depart in body bags, the rest bandaged up and contused. In dealing with European forces, the Russians would not hold back, as they do with the Ukrainians, whom they see as mentally ill, violent family members and try to treat gently.

Ignoring that inevitable eventuality, the European leaders imagine deploying tanks (which would have to keep well away from Russian positions because the Russians would blow them up using, for instance, Lancet drones as soon as they are spotted and within range). They also imagine deploying fighter jets to control the sky over the former Ukraine (ignoring the fact that the Russians would, once again, blow them out of the air as soon as they are within range). There may also be some frigates (illegal in the Black Sea under the Montreaux Convention of 1936).

If these plans seem a bit sketchy, then that’s because they are. I am not an expert on military matters, but the last three years of observing continuous military action on the Ukrainian front has perhaps taught me more than the European officials in charge of military policy seem able to grasp. Take Macron, for instance, who is, unfortunately, never at a loss for words: he openly declares his intention to take control of the land, sky and sea in and around the former Ukraine. It is as if the Russian forces don’t exist. What is that, willful ignorance or hysterical blindness?

Meanwhile, Monsieur Lecornu seems a bit more at home with reality and honestly admits: Russia takes control of several hundred square kilometers every month and will come to control Western Ukraine once the Kiev regime collapses. This implies that there will be no formerly Ukrainian territory left for Macron’s mighty forces to control. Do these two talk to each other? Perhaps they are so full of themselves that they can talk but can’t listen…

They do seem to agree on a common bit of ideology, synthesized into a basic formula: “the demilitarization of Ukraine is unacceptable in principle.” This is no longer even a veiled threat; it is a casus belli — a reason, a justification, a pretext for war. Anything can serve as the formal trigger: an accidental explosion, a staged provocation, even some imaginary incident trumpeted by Europe’s fake news media. The important point is that the political decision to intervene militarily seems to have already been made — and not for any strategic reason but purely out of greed. Everyone who is close to the defense contracts makes money on war. Europe no longer hides its motivations. It is willing to sell the death of its citizens in exchange for kickbacks and other forms of grift.

Will it ever come to a real, hot war? This is by no means certain. But the logic of events and the level of nervous hysteria in Western capitals indicate that they want to glue their broken world order back together by borrowing close to a trillion euros and throwing it at the defense contractors. The logic of this action will then require tens of thousands of their citizens to be sent to places where they will be maimed or killed — all for the sake of staying in power and personal self-enrichment.

This problem begs for a political solution. The question is, is such a solution even possible given the degenerate state of European politics? Yes, AfD is now the majority party in Germany (by a slim margin); but it is still being kept out of power. Such shifts may imply something significant, or they may signify nothing. So far, they are not preventing popularly detested nonentities such as Macron, Merz and Starmer from conspiring to take Europe to war against Russia.<

The best scenario imaginable is that their attempt to borrow a trillion euros will fail (for instance, because the US Federal Reserve, fearful of triggering a hyperinflationary spiral, will refuse to print a corresponding amount of dollars); or that their rearmament program will fail (because there isn’t enough of an industrial base left in Europe); or that their attempts to hold on to power will fail (because the Europeans will somehow generate enough brainpower to vote them out). This last bit — where the Europeans have to actually do something to save themselves — is admittedly the hardest to imagine.

What is easiest to imagine is that Russia will once again rise to the occasion and neutralize the military threat coming from Europe, as it had done with the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Poles, the French and the Germans. What is different this time is that Russia is now at its strongest and supremely well prepared to execute this task. But this task is an onerous one, and this time around the Russians may decide to make sure that Europe never poses a threat to Russia again, refashioning it into a collection of demilitarized, deindustrialized ethnic enclaves. After all, who said that demilitarization and denazification is just for the Ukrainians? But perhaps the Russians won’t have to do this; after all, that seems to be the direction in which Europe is heading in any case.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/6618eb1b-fc2e-4b39-8801-9f8d065dad6c

Charles Hugh Smith via Zero Hedge

AI fails at tasks where accuracy must be absolute to create value.

In reviewing the on-going discussions about how many people will be replaced by AI, I find a severe lack of real-world examples. I’m remedying this deficiency with an example of AI’s failure in the kind of high-value work that many anticipate will soon be performed by AI.

Few things in life are more pervasively screechy than hype, which brings us to the current feeding-frenzy of AI hype. Since we all read the same breathless claims and have seen the videos of robots dancing, I’ll cut to the chase: Nobody posts videos of their robot falling off a ladder and crushing the roses because, well, the optics aren’t very warm and fuzzy.

For the same reason, nobody’s sharing the AI tool’s error that forfeited the lawsuit. The only way to really grasp the limits of these tools is to deploy them in the kinds of high-level, high-value work that they’re supposed to be able to do with ease, speed and accuracy, because nobody’s paying real money to watch robots dance or read a copycat AI-generated essay on Yeats that’s tossed moments after being submitted to the professor.

In the real world of value creation, optics don’t count, accuracy counts. Nobody cares if the AI chatbot that churned out the Yeats homework hallucinated mid-stream because nobody’s paying for AI output that has zero scarcity value: an AI-generated class paper, song or video joins 10 million similar copycat papers / songs / videos that nobody pays attention to because they can create their own in 30 seconds.

So let’s examine an actual example of AI being deployed to do the sort of high-level, high-value work that it’s going to need to nail perfectly to replace us all at work. My friend Ian Lind, whom I’ve known for 50 years, is an investigative reporter with an enviably lengthy record of the kind of journalism few have the experience or resources to do. (His blog is www.iLind.net, ian@ilind.net)

The judge’s letter recommending Ian for the award he received from the American Judges Association for distinguished reporting about the Judiciary ran for 18 pages, and that was just a summary of his work.

Ian’s reporting/blogging in the early 2000s inspired me to try my hand at it in 2005.

Ian has spent the last few years helping the public understand the most complex federal prosecution case in Hawaii’s recent history, and so the number of documents that have piled up is enormous. He’s been experimenting with AI tools (NotebookLM, Gemini, ChatGPT) for months on various projects, and he recently shared this account with me:

“My experience has definitely been mixed. On the one hand, sort of high level requests like ‘identify the major issues raised in the documents and sort by importance’ produced interesting and suggestive results. But attempts to find and pull together details on a person or topic almost always had noticeable errors or hallucinations. I would never be able to trust responses to even what I consider straightforward instructions. Too many errors. Looking for mentions of ‘drew’ in 150 warrants said he wasn’t mentioned. But he was, I’ve gone back and found those mentions. I think the bots read enough to give an answer and don’t keep incorporating data to the end. The shoot from the hip and, in my experience, have often produced mistakes. Sometimes it’s 25 answers and one glaring mistake, sometimes more basic.”

Let’s start with the context. This is similar to the kind of work performed by legal services. Ours is a rule-of-law advocacy system, so legal proceedings are consequential. They aren’t a ditty or a class paper, and Ian’s experience is mirrored by many other professionals.

Let’s summarize AI’s fundamental weaknesses:

1. AI doesn’t actually “read” the entire collection of texts. In human terms, it gets “bored” and stops once it has enough to generate a credible response.

2. AI has digital dementia. It doesn’t necessarily remember what you asked for in the past nor does it necessarily remember its previous responses to the same queries.

3. AI is fundamentally, irrevocably untrustworthy. It makes errors that it doesn’t detect (because it didn’t actually “read” the entire trove of text) and it generates responses that are “good enough,” meaning they’re not 100% accurate, but they have the superficial appearance of being comprehensive and therefore acceptable. This is the “shoot from the hip” response Ian described.

In other words, 90% is good enough, as who cares about the other 10% in a college paper, copycat song or cutesy video.

But in real work, the 10% of errors and hallucinations actually matter, because the entire value creation of the work depends on that 10% being right, not half-assed.

In the realm of LLM AI, getting Yeats’ date of birth wrong–an error without consequence–is the same as missing the defendant’s name in 150 warrants. These programs are text / content prediction engines; they don’t actually “know” or “understand” anything. They can’t tell the difference between a consequential error and a “who cares” error.

This goes back to the classic AI thought experiment The Chinese Room, which posits a person who doesn’t know the Chinese language in a sealed room shuffling symbols around that translate English words to Chinese characters.

From the outside, it appears that the black box (the sealed room) “knows Chinese” because it’s translating English to Chinese. But the person–or AI agent–doesn’t actually “know Chinese”, or understand any of what’s been translated. It has no awareness of languages, meanings or knowledge.

This describes AI agents in a nutshell.

4. AI agents will claim their response is accurate when it is obviously lacking, they will lie to cover their failure, and then lie about lying. If pressed, they will apologize and then lie again. Read this account to the end: Diabolus Ex Machina.

In summary: AI fails at tasks where accuracy must be absolute to create value. lacking this, it’s not just worthless, it’s counter-productive and even harmful, creating liabilities far more consequential than the initial errors.

“But they’re getting better.” No, they’re not–not in what matters. AI agents are probabilistic text / content prediction machines; they’re trained parrots in the Chinese Room. They don’t actually “know” anything or “understand” anything, and adding another gazillion pages to their “training” won’t change this.

The Responsible Lie: How AI Sells Conviction Without Truth:

“The widespread excitement around generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek, is built on a fundamental misunderstanding. While these systems impress users with articulate responses and seemingly reasoned arguments, the truth is that what appears to be ‘reasoning’ is nothing more than a sophisticated form of mimicry.

These models aren’t searching for truth through facts and logical arguments–they’re predicting text based on patterns in the vast datasets they’re ‘trained’ on. That’s not intelligence–and it isn’t reasoning. And if their ‘training’ data is itself biased, then we’ve got real problems.

I’m sure it will surprise eager AI users to learn that the architecture at the core of LLMs is fuzzy–and incompatible with structured logic or causality. The thinking isn’t real, it’s simulated, and is not even sequential. What people mistake for understanding is actually statistical association.”

AI Has a Critical Flaw — And it’s Unfixable

“AI isn’t intelligent in the way we think it is. It’s a probability machine. It doesn’t think. It predicts. It doesn’t reason. It associates patterns. It doesn’t create. It remixes. Large Language Models (LLMs) don’t understand meaning — they predict the next word in a sentence based on training data.”

Let’s return now to the larger context of AI replacing human workers en masse. This post by Michael Spencer of AI Supremacy and Jing Hu of 2nd Order Thinkers offers a highly informed and highly skeptical critique of the hype that AI will unleash a tsunami of layoffs that will soon reach the tens of millions. Will AI Agents really Automate Jobs at Scale?

Jing Hu explains the fundamental weaknesses in all these agents: it’s well worth reading her explanations and real-world examples in the link above. Here is an excerpt:

“Today’s agents have minimal true agency.

Their ‘initiative’ is largely an illusion; behind the scenes, they follow (or are trying to) tightly choreographed steps that a developer or prompt writer set up.

If you ask an agent to do Task X, it will do X, then stop. Ask for Y, and it does Y. But if halfway through X something unexpected happens, say a form has a new field, or an API call returns an error, the agent breaks down.

Because it has zero understanding of the task.

Change the environment slightly (e.g., update an interface or move a button), and the poor thing can’t adapt on the fly.

AI agents today lack a genuine concept of overarching goals or the common-sense context that humans use.

They’re essentially text prediction engines.”

I’ve shared my own abysmal experiences with “customer service” AI bots:

Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work

Here’s my exploration of the kinds of experiential real-world skills AI won’t master with total capital and operational costs that are lower than the cost of human labor: oops, that hallucination just sawed through a 220V electrical line that wasn’t visible but the human knew was there:

What AI Can’t Do Faster, Better, or Cheaper Than Humans (June 2, 2025)

And here is a selection of my essays on AI, which I have been following since the early 1980s:

Essays on AI

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/maybe-ai-isnt-going-replace-you-work-after-all

By Mark Vandepitte

In a landmark ruling, the Brussels Court of First Instance has ordered the Flemish government not only to block a specific container of military equipment bound for Israel, but also to ban any further transit of military material to the country.

The judge ruled that Flanders — a region in the north of Belgium — is systematically failing to meet its obligations under arms legislation and international treaties, and even imposed a penalty for each shipment that goes through despite the ruling.

The four Flemish NGOs that filed the case were granted full victory on all points.

The container at the center of the case is located in the port of Antwerp. It contains so-called tapered roller bearings, produced by Timken via a French branch, and destined for Ashot Ashkelon Industries, an Israeli defense company that supplies components for Merkava tanks and Namer armored vehicles.

According to the organizations, these systems are used daily in the genocide in Gaza.

In its ruling, the court immediately prohibits the Flemish government from authorizing any new arms transit to Israel. Since 2009, there has been an agreement not to export weapons to Israel that could reinforce its armed forces — a policy that has been seriously eroded in practice.

To enforce this, the court has imposed a penalty of 50,000 euros for each shipment that still leaves for Israel.

Containers may only be shipped to Israel if the Flemish government has written proof that the goods are intended for civilian use. According to lawyer Lies Michielsen of Progress Lawyers Network, who pleaded the case, the ruling implies that the government must actively verify the final destination of goods exported to Israel.

Significance

This ruling is highly significant because the court has confirmed that facilitating the delivery of weapons to a state committing war crimes or possible genocide is illegal.

“The court is stating what politics refuses to acknowledge,” says Fien De Meyer from the League for Human Rights.

This means an end to impunity: governments can no longer look away while their weapons are used for atrocities.

The ruling sets a legal precedent that forces European and other governments to take responsibility. Similar lawsuits in other countries are expected to follow.

In any case, it is a victory for peace and solidarity movements, showing that resistance works.

Follow-Up

Around the same time, another lawsuit was filed in Belgium — this time against the federal government. A group of Palestinian claimants and Belgian organizations sent a formal notice to the federal government, accusing Belgium of passive complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

If no satisfactory response is received, they will proceed to court — which would also be a global first.

The action is led by a Palestinian citizen, several Belgian NGOs, and a legal expert. They demand that Belgium halt all military deliveries to Israel, confiscate imports from occupied Palestinian territories, block investments in those areas, and suspend the EU-Israel association agreement.

According to them, Belgium’s passivity is both morally and legally unacceptable. The action is supported by a group of artists and intellectuals who are raising funds for legal costs.

There is also movement at the European level. The legal NGO JURDI is taking both the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to the Court of Justice for their “negligence” regarding the violence in Gaza. For the first time in history, these two powerful institutions are being sued for failing to uphold their own treaty obligations.

JURDI cites Article 265 of the EU Treaty, which makes institutional inaction punishable. According to them, EU institutions are applying double standards: Russia was heavily sanctioned, while Israel remains untouched despite clear human rights violations.

JURDI is demanding, among other things, the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the termination of subsidies, and sanctions against Israeli officials. The complaint argues that the EU is both legally and morally obligated to act and warns that even European leaders could be prosecuted for complicity in genocide.

Complicity

At the heart of these cases lies the question: does a country — or by extension, the European Commission — have a legal obligation, as a third party, to prevent genocide elsewhere? According to the Genocide Convention, it does. That treaty obliges every country not only to punish genocide but also to actively prevent it.

In January, the International Court of Justice already called on Israel to take all necessary measures to prevent genocide. But does that obligation also apply to countries like Belgium, which are not directly involved?

According to eighteen top Belgian jurists, the answer is yes. In a letter, they warn that a country like Belgium risks being brought before the International Court of Justice itself if it continues to remain silent about the situation in Gaza. Passivity can be legally interpreted as complicity.

The jurists are demanding sanctions against Israel and consider suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement as an absolute minimum. Countries too often hide behind diplomatic caution, but according to them, that attitude is legally and morally untenable. Only concrete actions — not words — can save the credibility of Belgium and the EU.

No Pause

The court victory in Flanders and other ongoing legal proceedings represent a qualitative leap in the fight against genocide. But that fight is far from over. Genocide does not pause. While politicians delay, people in Gaza suffer end die.

Now is the time to maintain and intensify pressure. Legal actions must be brought in other countries as well. Key demands include the immediate enforcement of the ban on arms deliveries, full transparency about the export of military equipment, and prosecution of those complicit in these crimes.

Lawsuits like this are very important, but certainly not sufficient to stop the killing in Gaza. Political leaders worldwide must be pressured through mass protests and acts of solidarity.

That is why the Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza have jointly issued a call for global mobilization starting on 20 July 2025 to save the population in Gaza from genocide, hunger, and thirst caused by the Israeli occupation.

They denounce the international silence and call on countries and citizens around the world to take to the streets and act to halt the genocide.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/judge-orders-halt-arms-transit-israel/5895770

Alex Richardson
June 28, 2025

China’s US Treasury holdings have dropped to 2009 levels after its central bank sold more than $8 billion in the month of April.

According to a new update from the Treasury Department, China held $757.2 billion worth of Treasuries at the end of April 2025 – down from $765.4 billion in March and $784.3 in February.

China now holds significantly fewer T-bills than the UK’s $807.7 billion, and sits in third place on the list of the biggest major foreign holders of Treasuries after over 17 years of being in second place.

China’s big offloading of Treasuries appears to be part of a broader reconfiguration of the country’s financial strategy.

Macro analyst Adam Kobeissi reports that China’s Treasury-dumping spree has coincided with an extremely aggressive accumulation of gold that has only accelerated since 2022.

“China is diversifying its currency reserves out of the US Dollar:

The share of US Treasury Holdings in total Chinese FX reserves has declined by ~15 percentage points since 2016, to ~22%, near the lowest in at least 15 years.

Over the same period, gold’s share has risen ~5 percentage points, to a record 6.8%.

This trend accelerated in 2022, and since then, gold’s share of Chinese reserves has doubled.

Over this time, China has acquired ~200 tonnes of gold.

Gold is more desired than ever.”

Since 2022, the US dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the USD against a weighted basked of other major foreign currencies, is down over 15% since 2022, creating skepticism about the greenback’s future as a world reserve asset.

Last week, “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb said that the dollar had already been effectively been replaced by gold as the world’s reserve currency.

Says Taleb,

“You can see the accumulation of gold in the reserves and the behavior of gold over the past 12 months. And it didn’t start with Trump’s policies. Of course, it started with Biden when he froze the accounts of people connected to Putin, and of course, thinking that it would be limited there, but people not connected to Putin decided to stay away from the euro and the dollar.

And gold is effectively now the reserve currency. Transactions take place in dollars and euros, usually dollars, and at the same rate, however, they get converted back into gold. And we can see that from the accumulation of reserves.”

[…]

Via https://dailyhodl.com/2025/06/28/china-abruptly-dumps-8200000000-in-us-treasuries-as-dollar-extends-massive-losses/

FILE PHOTO: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. ©  Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images

By Graham Hryce

The Trump administration has been having a rough few months.

Domestic chaos – fuelled by the use of black clad, masked para-military squads to deport illegal immigrants – has fused with the deepening foreign policy crises resulting from Trump’s support for the doomed right-wing Zelensky and Netanyahu regimes.

And if this were not bad enough, last week Trump escalated his disruption of the global economic order by imposing yet more tariffs on the EU and other countries that are ostensibly American allies.

Add to that the establishment of an “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida and Trump’s recently revealed threat to “bomb the sh*t out of Russia and China,” and it’s no surprise that even Trump’s core MAGA supporters are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with a president who promised them that he would swiftly end the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and restore America’s economic prosperity. They are also up in arms at the White House’s refusal to release Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, suspecting a self-serving cover up.

Prominent Trump supporters are now openly critical, and Trump’s dissatisfaction with inept cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi is clear for all to see. More ominous, perhaps, is the calculated silence of Vice President J.D. Vance in recent times.

Even in Australia there are signs that the American hegemony is beginning to crumble.

Last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the extraordinary step of refusing to reassure Trump that Australia would assist America militarily if it went to war with China over Taiwan.

Albanese’s reluctant assertion of foreign policy independence was somewhat surprising given that, until now, he has been a keen supporter of Trump’s foreign policy. Albanese remains a committed funder of the Zelensky regime, and Australia has consistently aligned itself with US policy in Gaza.

The Australian leader enthusiastically embraced the AUKUS military agreement with America and the UK, when it was entered into by his predecessor, Conservative Prime Minister Morrison, and has echoed – albeit more moderately – the narrative surrounding a perceived China threat.

Albanese’s previous reluctance to assert its foreign policy independence is a consequence of Australia’s longstanding dependence on America – together with Albanese’s pragmatic decision to adopt wholesale the Conservative coalition’s foreign policy framework so as to neutralise foreign policy as a domestic political issue.

This foreign policy capitulation was also designed to mute criticism from the pro-Trump, pro-Israel, anti-China and anti-Russia Murdoch media empire – which incessantly promulgates various rejigged Cold War conspiracy theories demonising China, Russia, and the Palestinian cause.

Albanese, of course, has has not succeeded in placating Murdoch – and it is a measure of his abject weakness as a political leader that he refuses to openly attack the owner of Fox News who peddles the same discredited dogmas in Australia that he does in America. It is Albanese’s most egregious failure as prime minister to have permitted Murdoch to frame the foreign policy public debate – such as it is – in this country.

Why then has Albanese belatedly decided to stand up to Trump?

Primarily because the fundamental irrationality at the heart of the Trumpian agenda has now become glaringly obvious – even to political leaders as maladroit and supine as Albanese.

Trump’s efforts to dismantle the rules-based world order have, paradoxically, only strengthened China, Russia and BRICS. Meanwhile, the American proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza continue to intensify. Nor has Trump’s green lighting of Netanyahu’s recent attacks on Iran destroyed that country’s nuclear capacity.

Trump has shown skepticism about NATO, and his commitment to defending allies like Australia is unclear. The recent inquiry launched by Pete Hegseth into the AUKUS compact may signal intentions to withdraw from the agreement.

The AUKUS deal – which obliges Australia is to pay $360 billion for a few submarines that may or may not be delivered years down the road – is not only economically profligate, but it ties Australia to Trump’s military agenda.

Why would Albanese give a commitment to Trump to provide militarily assistance should America be unwise enough to commence a war with China? Australia has no strategic interest in defending Taiwan, and only the most ideologically deranged of Murdoch journalists could believe that Australia and America could defeat China militarily in a war in Southeast Asia.

Despite advocating for a reduced global footprint, Trump continues to promote the concept of American global leadership. He may still pursue conflict with China, possibly to shift attention from persistent domestic and

China is Australia’s most important trading partner and Trump sought last week’s assurance from Albanese while the prime minister was in China on an important five-day visit. The trip included a meeting with the Chinese president – something, by the way, that Trump has denied Albanese to date.

Trump was well aware of this, and he well knew that, if Albanese had given him the assurance he sought, China would have immediately retaliated by imposing trade sanctions on Australia.

The contrast between Trump’s treatment of Albanese and Xi Jinping’s – at their private lunch last week Xi committed China “unswervingly towards ongoing cooperation and common understanding with Australia” – is stark and telling.

Meanwhile, as the US shifts away from traditional diplomacy, China and Russia have deepened their diplomatic engagements.

Trump’s domestic policy measures also warrant reconsideration by Western political leaders. The scenes of masked ICE officers clashing with protesters in California have drawn comparisons to past episodes of American civil unrest. Many observers were alarmed when Senator Alex Padilla was manhandled by officers for raising questions at a press conference.

Additionally, the administration’s suppression of dissent – including defunding public broadcasting and pressuring media outlets to silence critical voices – raises concerns about media freedom and civil liberties.

The perceived harshness of Trump-era policies contributed to Albanese’s election success. Many Western voters reject combative political behaviour, and Australian voters were similarly put off by Peter Dutton’s emulation of Trump’s combative style.

There are two key takeaways for Western leaders from Trump’s treatment of Albanese, and Albanese’s decision to resist his demands.

First, that the Trump administration is facing deep internal and external challenges, and its foreign policy approach may become increasingly erratic and unilateral. Second, that Trump may prioritize his administration’s objectives even at the expense of partners. Albanese was placed in an extremely difficult diplomatic position this week.

For many mainstream Western leaders, these insights may be more than a little uncomfortable – particularly those who continue to support US foreign policy and seek approval from the administration.

There are also domestic pressures, including media outlets aligned with Trump, that make it difficult to oppose his influence. Unsurprisingly, the Murdoch press criticised Albanese for “neglecting the US alliance” and “putting the region in danger.”

Nevertheless, as the inconsistencies within Trump’s foreign policy become more apparent, political leaders in the West who value sovereignty and economic stability may feel compelled – as Albanese did – to redefine their alliances and pursue a more independent path.

If they fail to do so, they may face a similar fate to Trump’s most obsequious and compliant ally – Vladimir Zelensky.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/621829-american-vassal-defies-master/

Lost Kids

Directed by Nikita Sutyrin (2019)

Film Review

https://en.rtdoc.tv/films/560-lost-kids

This is a film about the nearly 100,000 Indian children lost to child trafficking every year. Because impoverished families are reluctant to seek police help, there are no official statistics. However observers estimate an Indian child goes missing every eight minutes. Police officials try to stem the problem by patrolling trains on the lookout for single men accompanied by children clearly not related to them. In some instances social workers accompany the police to assist children in reuniting with their families.

Traffickers specifically target local “tribal” (indigenous) girls, referred to as “black beauties.” Traffickers often lure them to the cities with promises of work. In some instances, families pressure them to go.

The filmmakers following several families as they put up lost child posters, request access to police surveillance videos and seek help through the help center operated by the Dehli Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

After months of putting up fliers, one of distressed fathers featured miraculous reunites with his son after a Mumbai stranger recognizes his son’s photo. The odds of locating a lost child in a city of 12.5 million people is infinitesimally small.

According to the UN, 40,000 Indian kids go missing every year. The Indian police put the number at 80,000. India has a total of 1.2 million children.

By Medeea Greere

From behind bars, Ghislaine Maxwell confirms the existence of Epstein’s blackmail vault. Inside it: videos, photos, and documents — including damning evidence tying Barack Obama to underage boys on Epstein’s island. The Deep State is imploding from within.

After years of carefully calculated silence, Ghislaine Maxwell has finally broken, unleashing a flood of information that directly threatens the world’s most protected political dynasty — a reality so toxic that even hardened intelligence veterans are reportedly scrambling to prepare damage-control blueprints.

She confirmed, in no uncertain terms, that Jeffrey Epstein maintained an insurance file — not a conspiracy theory, not a rumor, but a meticulously organized archive of photographic evidence, video footage, handwritten logs, digital records, and notarized documents. All of it crafted not to protect the victims, but to protect himself from justice by turning the most powerful men on earth into blackmailed puppets.

• Epstein called this file his “final bullet” — evidence so damning, no prosecutor would dare touch him.
• Multiple copies of the vault were allegedly distributed to trusted international operatives, hidden in private security firms, and cloud-based military-grade encryption nodes.

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Maxwell states clearly that within the archive there are files implicating Obama directly, with footage showing him in compromising contact with underage males during clandestine visits to the island.

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THE ISLAND WASN’T A PARADISE — IT WAS A BLACKMAIL FACTORY DESIGNED FOR TOTAL CONTROL

Forget everything the mainstream told you about Epstein’s island being a “rich man’s escape” — the place was a militarized psychological operation run with precision and ruthlessness. It was built not just for hedonism, but for recording perversion, storing it, and using it against those who participated.

Every inch of that property was rigged — the bedrooms, the massage rooms, the poolside suites — with hidden high-resolution cameras, infrared sensors, and biometric tracking. No one left without being digitized. No act went unrecorded.

• Epstein’s security team included former Mossad and CIA contractors, hired specifically to handle surveillance extraction and encryption.
• Recordings were catalogued by target value — tiered by political relevance, financial net worth, and future blackmail potential.
• The most high-profile files — labeled as “Alpha Protocols” — were stored off-island in offshore servers reportedly tied to Swiss financial vaults and Qatari intelligence networks.

This wasn’t a sex ring. It was a blackmail empire, and the guest list was a who’s who of planetary governance..

DEEP STATE COLLAPSE MODE — CENSORSHIP, COORDINATED DENIAL, FULL-PANIC OPERATIONS

The moment Ghislaine Maxwell’s statement leaked, the machine kicked in — not to refute it with facts, but to bury it under the weight of silence, AI-generated noise, and algorithmic censorship.

Every mention of “Obama + Epstein + Island” was throttled. Hashtags were frozen. Video uploads were shadowbanned. Paid media assets were activated to flood the digital space with decoys, discrediting campaigns, and rushed “fact-checks” written by the same clowns who told you Hunter’s laptop was Russian fiction.

• Internal memos from Google and Meta have leaked showing direct compliance with federal requests to suppress keywords tied to this bombshell.
• MSM outlets were given a “blacklist order” — a no-cover zone for anything involving “Obama,” “Epstein,” or “Maxwell Files.”
• Intelligence agencies have moved to classify parts of the vault under “national security priority”, a classic move to seal elite criminal evidence.

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THE VERDICT THAT MUST COME — TRIBUNALS, EXPOSURE, AND RESTORATION

We are no longer asking for transparency — we are demanding it. The people of the United States, and the world, deserve to know the full extent of the crimes hidden by Epstein’s archive and the true reach of the pedophile elite network that extended into the White House, Hollywood, the UN, and beyond.

Maxwell’s confession is not the end — it is the ignition. From here, the path is clear: declassify the files, subpoena the elites, begin public trials, and never stop until the entire system of rot is disassembled before the eyes of the world.

• We demand a global independent tribunal with full authority to investigate Maxwell’s claims and prosecute beyond national borders.
• All Epstein-related material must be extracted from intelligence vaults and placed into public domain.
• Any official, media outlet, or institution caught suppressing this truth must face treason-level accountability.

This is no longer about Epstein. It’s about the system that made him possible. And that system is about to fall — because the people have seen too much.

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Via https://amg-news.com/ghislaine-maxwell-breaks-silence-epsteins-insurance-file-shows-barack-obama-with-young-boys-on-pedophile-island-deep-state-panic-mode-activated/

“Thanks to President Donald Trump’s leadership, Executive Order 14176 resulted in three, unprecedented interagency efforts to identify, digitize, declassify, and release files related to the federal government’s investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. King,” Gabbard added.

However, many of the MLK documents remain heavily redacted.

Responding to the MLK files’ publication, the King family said in a statement: “As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief—a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met—an absence our family has endured for over 57 years. We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

The King family reiterated their belief that “someone other than James Earl Ray was the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”

“As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,” their statement said.

As his relatives noted, the FBI infamously surveilled King—America’s most hated man, according to a 1968 Harris poll that showed the civil rights icon with a 75% negative approval rating—under the notorious COINTELPRO program, especially after his civil rights activism evolved into staunch critiques of U.S. militarism during the escalating Vietnam War and capitalism-driven economic inequality.

Then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the wiretapping of King’s phone, with the head agent in charge of COINTELPRO, William Sullivan, warning that “we must mark [King]… as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation.” This, just before King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for helping to lead the struggle against Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.

The FBI systematically bugged King’s home and hotel rooms, mailed an anonymous letter urging him to kill himself, and even sent a tape of what it claimed was King having one of his numerous alleged affairs to his wife. When King criticized the FBI for ignoring the heinous and often murderous crimes of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who were still lynching Black people with alarming regularity and impunity, an infuriated Hoover publicly called him the “most notorious liar” in America.

People from across the political spectrum took to social media to slam the MLK document dump as “a desperate attempt to distract from the Trump administration’s decision to block the release of the Epstein files (despite earlier promises),” as the X account Republicans Against Trump portrayed the move.

Prominent attorney and Democratic strategist Aaron Parnas wrote on the social media site Bluesky, “Whether through releasing the MLK files or trying to prosecute President [Barack] Obama, Donald Trump is flooding the zone with information to distract you from the Epstein files.”

Bernice King—MLK’s granddaughter and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change—wrote on X: “Now, do the Epstein files.”

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Via https://www.commondreams.org/news/mlk-files-epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell, pictured in 2003, was convicted of aiding Epstein’s criminal efforts. Now, Congress wants her to testify amid the fallout over whether or not the DOJ has additional information on powerful people who helped enable Epstein (Getty)

By John Bowden

The House Oversight Committee approved a subpoena for Ghislaine Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, by voice vote on Tuesday.

Lawmakers voted to compel Maxwell’s testimony before the committee as the issue of whether a so-called “client list” of Epstein’s co-conspirators exists continues to consume Washington and much of American political discourse across X, Truth Social and other social platforms.

In the House of Representatives, the investigation provoked a rare moment of unity between some of Donald Trump’s closest supporters in the GOP, some of his strongest critics on the left, and even a Republican representative who has become one of the biggest thorns in the president’s side.

While the committee’s vote to compel Maxwell to testify is clearly significant, a bipartisan cohort of lawmakers is threatening to take it a step further by forcing a vote on a resolution directing the Justice Department to release the entirety of its evidence on the Epstein and Maxwell cases.

Congressional subpoenas carry the weight of a court order, and Maxwell remains incarcerated on a 20-year sentence following her conviction for sex trafficking of a minor and other charges. As Epstein’s lead accomplice, she’s thought to know more about the inner workings of his social circles than anyone besides Epstein himself.

Arrested for similar charges after a prior conviction, Epstein died in 2019 in federal custody. The circumstances of his death are another mysterious angle in the saga, given that it was ruled a suicide and occurred in what was supposed to be tightly controlled federal custody.

The Justice Department released video of an area outside Epstein’s cell earlier this year that contained at least a full minute of missing footage, drawing further speculation.

The alleged ties between a dead pedophile and powerful figures and institutions in American society are now under the microscope as Americans of all political stripes question whether the federal government is engaged in a cover-up to protect them. The relationship between Epstein and President Donald Trump is central to those questions, as the president was a known friend of Epstein for years.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published the contents of a birthday note the paper reported as allegedly authored by Trump for Epstein’s 50th birthday celebration in 2003. The contents of the bawdy alleged note hint at a “secret” shared by the two men.

Trump, in response, denied the authenticity of the note and said the reporting was false. Hours later he filed a $10 million libel suit against the WSJ in Florida federal court.

Epstein’s efforts to cultivate powerful relationships went far beyond Trump, who at the time was a real estate mogul in New York. The billionaire financier held an office at Harvard University and was connected to other U.S. intellectual and political figures, including former President Bill Clinton. Britain’s Prince Andrew was also engulfed in scandal over his own friendship with Epstein.

A top Justice Department official, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, tried to stifle some of the speculation about a supposed Justice Department cover-up on Tuesday. In a tweet, he wrote that the agency would have investigators meet with Maxwell to determine whether she “has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims” of Epstein.

The statement was bizarre on its face; Maxwell, as Epstein’s co-conspirator, obviously would be the prime source of such information and Blanche’s statement implies that such information was not gathered as part of the prosecution leading to her 20-year sentencing in 2022.

A statement from the Justice Department and FBI accelerated the backlash after officials declared that there was no list of Epstein’s co-conspirators and no evidence definitively linking others besides Maxwell to his crimes. On the right, conversations about the issue veered quickly towards accusations of a cover-up involving the president himself.

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Via https://nz.news.yahoo.com/house-panel-votes-subpoena-ghislaine-143440997.html